Learning How To Walk: Muxia - Barcelona - Madrid - Montreal

Hello again! After my pilgrimage ended physically in Finisterre and I sent you my last email I have made my way back to Mom and Dad's place in Ottawa and have had a neat little trip back that I'll try to summarize here... I spent one day in Finisterre, going back out to the Cape to watch a last magnificent sun set, then bid farewell to all of my friends who were still there as I walked alone toward Muxia, 31 km north. I climbed into the mist of the forest in the morning of July 3rd, encountering several pilgrims, some familiar, walking in the opposite direction on the more traditional route from Muxia to Finisterre. As I sat on the new bridge above the barely submerged stepping stones that used to be the only fording of the river, making a sandwich for lunch, a muscular little fellow named John with a big grey beard and jolly eyes came stumping along. We walked together a bit and he turned out to be quite an Australian swagman, having done long distant walks of all kinds in Australia, New Zealand, the British Isles, Spain, Portugal, China, North America, Africa, and more... The next morning I went out to the Cape of Muxia, a medieval site of pilgrimage as legend had it that the Virgin Mary had appeared to St. James on the spot in a stone boat to encourage him on his apocryphal mission in the area. The little Church of the Barques, with models of ships hanging from the ceiling, was built with its main gates right upon the stone beach. Two huge boulders on the rock of the Cape were thought to be the hull and the sail of the boat, and the hull being credited with the ability to cure back problems I lay out upon it, thinking that I'd take any help that was offered to avoid the hereditary arthritis in my family. I climbed as near to the ocean as I could get on the rocky outcrop, the slippery stone and barnacles feeling almost as difficult to navigate as the sharp cliffs of Finisterre. Watching the breaking sea swells rushing toward me, I observed the wooden staff that had carried me from Gimont, France, where I had found it in my time of need on my second day of walking. The bottom end was a rounded stump, the long fibers having rolled back, clipped themselves off, and rolled back once again after 1300 km of hard use. I suppose it's possible that another pilgrim had carried it to the spot next to the Chemin d'Arles where I had found it, making it conceivable that it had walked further than I had. It had kept my balance on difficult paths and stream crossings, protected me from ferocious dogs, relieved my feet, ankles and knees of tones of strain, and had been held to my heart when my heart had need its support. I had even run back in the direction that I had come on several occasions when I had forgotten it somewhere. Now I lifted the length of wood above my head, it having reached the end of its pilgrimage, and threw it like a javelin into the froth of a huge breaking wave. It was carried it torpedo like to the sea to writhed like a free eel through the water. I made my way back to the boulders above the tide mark and donned my sack, feeling slightly strange walking on only my two feet. I climbed the hill behind the church to what had once been a pagan site and sat at the base of the cross that attempted to hide the hill's ancient power at it's summit. I sat there for a long while, observing the little town and the extensive archaeological remains of the foundations of large dense stone habitations that spread out beyond it. Eventually I descended and had lunch at the waterside before catching my bus into Santiago, the first piece of motorized transportation that I had taken since Toulouse, speeding past the places that I had walked by over the course of the previous week in the space of about two hours. John and I walked into Santiago from the bus station, following the Camino and encountering pilgrims having a very different experience as they arrived for the first time. I checked into the same hostel that Florian was staying in, having returned from Finisterre by bus to take one more rest day before returning to Lyon. The bus from Finisterre had been much too fast for him, having been transported by his own power for longer than I had, and now he was bracing himself for the bus trip all the way back to his home where all of his friends would be waiting to see him at a gig that his band would be playing... too much all at once he was afraid. We went out for a wonderful dinner of salmon boiled in olive oil with garlic with another French couple who had walked the Chemin de Puy who we had met on and off over the Camino, and Takei, their Japanese friend who they had met on the Chemin de Puy. The next morning Florian and I bid farewell as he headed for his bus, and I ran some errands before attending the pilgrim mass at the cathedral one last time. I had an early dinner then prominaded the city parks a bit with Ben from Toronto and was delighted to meet Belas and Miriam, the lovely guitar-carrying Catalans who I had enjoyed walking with for a few days on the meseta. The last farewells said, I boarded the bus out to the airport and caught my flight to Barcelona. Over the course of the next few hours I traversed about the same distance as had taken me almost two months to walk and I landed in Barcelona at about 1 am. I took the bus into town, then walked strait to my primary reason for visiting the city: Gaudi's unfinished masterpiece, El Temple Expiatori De La Sagrada Familia. The massive bell towers appeared suddenly before me after a long walk, looming in the darkness, unilluminated in the early morning. I stood before the exploding Western portal of the transept, the Passion Gate, and muttered to myself "this guy was nuts! This guy was absolutely off - his - rocker," and I marveled at the genius of a mad man when it was allowed to manifest. I walked around the entire basilica, wondering at the glowing abstraction of the stained glass of the apse and the enigmatic bell towers that rose into oblivion in the distant darkness. Having slept only very little on the flight, I used my pack as a pillow on a park bench in the treed plaza flanking the Western transcept and slept a little. I arose as the early sun caressed the stone and went around to the Nativity portal as the pure white doves sculpted into the East transept took celebratory flight. After marveling at the sight in the quiet of the lonely morning, mirrored in the flat pond of the plaza before it, I walked back toward the centre of town, through the Atlantis of timelessly fantastical architecture and luxurious gardens. I stopped for breakfast and walked through the huge parks and plazas of the Arc de Triumf with their extraordinary gardens, fountains and statuary before entering the medieval Jewish Quarter, passing the ancient Roman fortifications, and entering the Picasso museum. With an exemplary collection of Pablo Picasso's early works housed in his home town and set in chronological order I came to much better understand the father of Cubism, especially as I had now visited several of the places he had grown up in. I ate lunch in a beautiful plaza, then checked into a hostel and visited several art exhibitions and pieces of Gaudi's architecture on my way to and from booking an overnight train to Madrid for the next evening. After eating a delicious vegetarian quiche for dinner in the park I enjoyed a free solo concert of Bach's Solo Cello Suites intermixed with contemporary works, sitting below the huge ornate fountain of Venus in the glow of the setting sun. I did not sleep very well as I had unwittingly checked into a party hostel - the other being full - and was awakened in the middle of the night by my drunken room mates. The next morning I headed back to the Sagrada Familia and continued to stare at it as the line to enter the basilica wound around the building blissfully slowly. The sheer beauty and uniqueness of Gaudi's style was mind blowing, and I wandered around the huge building, inside and out, for over four hours. Afterward I walked up to the architect's Park Guell and walked around the wonderland of structures which grew from the stone of the Earth. I then went to attend a Catalan mass in the Crypt of the Sagrada Familia, next to the tomb of Antonio Gaudi himself. Afterward I went to touch the waters of the Mediterranean, where so much of my imagination had sailed. Realizing I had misjudged the distance to the train station, I began walking quickly towards it, weaving through the crowds of tourists which had congregated on La Rambla, and soon broke into an all out sprint. I arrived, having run half the width of Barcelona, my clothing and hair soaked with sweat from my long run, ten minutes after my train had departed. I briefly lamented the fact that I had wasted the ideal train and the fare for it until the station closed and I lay out my poncho and sheet on the tobacco-littered sidewalk and went to sleep there on the ground rather than in my bed that was speeding toward Madrid. The station was open again by the time I awoke and I got on the next, faster and more expensive train and sped across the barren Don Quixote landscape to arrive in Madrid only about an hour after the other train would have. I went strait to the Museo del Prado, the huge national art gallery of Spain, long renowned for its outstanding collection of masterpieces by the Old Masters, where a Classical guitar player picked the Spanish melodies of Fernando Sor and Joaquin Rodrigo. I spent all day just visiting the first half of the gallery, including such pieces that I had studied my whole life as Pieter Brueghel's "The Triumph of Death," Heronymous Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" triptych, Albreicht Durer's "Self Portrait," Fra Angelico's "Annunciation," and many, many more. Unfortunately the museum closed before I had reached the majority of the works of Titian, Rafael, El Greco, and other greats.... I walked around the parks, plazas, palaces and promenades of Madrid for the rest of the evening - and spent my last Euros on gazpacho, paella, pinchos and helado yogurt for dinner in a small Spanish version of Ottawa's Byward market - before relaxing and observing the bustling Plaza Mayor and eventually retiring to bed in the only single room I had slept in in all of Europe. The following morning I had breakfast and headed out to the airport where I caught my flight to London, where I had a beautiful view of the London Eye, Big Ben, the Tower of London and Westminster Abby as we landed, then transferred to my flight over the Atlantic to Montreal... As I flew back home at a speed hundreds of times faster than that which I had come accustomed to traveling I felt strangely normal, and that confused me. I wrote "It feels like I haven't done anything. That doesn't feel good or bad, just normal. The idea of walking across half of Europe through medieval pilgrim towns to a place called the End of the Earth seems laughably quaint and odd. My memories of the trip seem more distant than those from before it, like a dream, and indeed I don't really believe it happened. I've just awoken with the glorious sound of a majestic organ and a nun's song stuck in my head, and the jolly laughter of people that I love who I may never meet again. I'm flying, but where from? Maybe this is the end of my gestation period, and who can retain the memory of the womb after they have learned to walk? The space before me is as unknown as the space behind, and that emptiness seems too difficult to fill. The perfection of Picasso's knowledge of form drives the frustration to murder it, the magnificence of Gaudi's architecture's product is its insanity. What the hell can I do? [Signed] The Lost Pilgrim." After landing in Montreal I found Dad waiting at Arrivals, having driven from Ottawa. We hugged and drove to the hotel and slept in magnificently comfortable beds... but even though I'd been awake for 24 hours I still woke up at 1 am, the time that I was accustomed to getting up at with the time change. In the morning we made our way to the Musee d'Art Contemporain, visiting several private galleries along the way and having lengthy conversations with their curators. Dad and I thoroughly enjoyed the two small exhibits of exceptional abstract works, mostly by Quebec artists. Although the works were of such a high caliber, so complementing of eachother, and very much in my aesthetic, I think that the experience of having walked and observed beauty without distraction for two months allowed me to enjoy the show much more than I might have before. After our visit we walked back to the hotel and drove to Ottawa with the radio playing in time for dinner with Mom and Harry, a distance that would have taken a week to walk. So here I am in Nepean, the suburb of row houses, highways and strip malls. There are some nice parks around, though, where we walk Max, the dog, and we have a community garden plot to tend to, a nice little garden out back, and a house full of beautiful paintings. I've been playing with paint with Dad a bit in his studio as he experiments with new media, cooking dinners for the family, and catching up with friends. In the next little while I'll be painting the trim on the house, volunteering at the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, and travelling for a couple of weeks with Mom, Dad and Harry on the canals in the area. In the meantime I'll have to be studying Mandarin as Mom has been posted to Beijing from late August to October, and I am going to join her there for a bit! I'm hoping to also be able to visit my friends and family in British Columbia a bit on my way to or from China. By the time I get back to Ottawa where I am planning to stay for the next little while I will hopefully be close to pinning down a job to pay for my next few years of university, although the current political economic climate here may not be very conducive. If you have any leads, please do let me know! I'd also like to continue to learn languages, and to continue with my studies through reading and courses while I am taking a short break from school. So I guess this is the last letter of this series, although I may send out something from Beijing. It remains difficult to analyse this pilgrimage, but I know that I have met many good friends, seen and done amazing things, experienced beauty, and learned to move slowly, calmly, simply and naturally, following the guidance of God which becomes clearer when distractions are minimized. Marcus Aurelius said that "very little is needed to be happy." I may be abusing the translation, but I think that the arrangement of words is very apt: perhaps what one needs, in order to be happy, is little. Traveling with all of my necessities minimized to an 8 kilo sack it becomes even more apparent how much we provide for eachother, even across time and space, and how much the Earth, the Universe, God provides for us. I am neither Catholic nor Christian, but I have found that religions and what they have to offer are - or can be - gifts to all of the world rather than exclusive and polarizing clubs. For this reason I felt little discomfort walking on a Catholic path, gratefully accepting Catholic hospitality and prayers, and attending Catholic mass in Catholic cathedrals. As long as I am not seen as an intruder I am comfortable. These things could just as easily have been offered by Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Taoists or Atheists, as long as I am accepted by others and I am accepting of them there are many gifts that we can exchange. When I left on this trip my greatest achievement in preparation was my lack of expectations. It could have been a waste of time and money, I could have hated it, I could have been hurt or lost or rejected, but I would still have done it. I didn't walk this path expecting it to be the time of my life as it was, I did it because I was inexplicably called to. I may not yet - I may never - understand why, but the lessons, friends and experiences that I know I have had validate for me that my sense of calling was real. Anyway, life goes on! And, with care, so does the pilgrimage. Thanks so much for accompanying me on the Way, for your well-wishes, and for and being the recipients of these regurgitations of experiences and thoughts. It's been great to hear from some of you, and if we haven't yet we will have to catch up so that I can hear your story of the past few months! !Buen Camino, y Buen Vida! Your friend, Bradley Ottawa, Ontario, Canada